1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image data transfer method for sending image data obtained by a digital camera and recorded in a recording medium to data storage means installed in a DPE store or the like. The present invention also relates to a digital camera and a program that causes a computer to execute the image data transfer method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Image data obtained by a digital camera are recorded in a portable recording medium such as an IC memory, a Memory Stick, and a Smart Media. Since a recording medium has limited capacity, a plurality of recording media is used for storing a large amount of image data, which is costly. Furthermore, in some cases, a recording medium cannot be taken out from an inexpensive digital camera. Therefore, such a digital camera can photograph only a small number of images.
For this reason, a method of storing image data in an external data storing apparatus installed in a DPE store or the like by sending the image data via a communication line has been proposed. Furthermore, a digital camera enabling data erasure has also been proposed (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-184324). In this camera, image data recorded in a recording medium are erased or a property thereof is changed to enable erasure after sending the image data to a data storing apparatus via a communication line. According to such a digital camera, free space of a recording medium can be increased by deleting image data from the recording medium after sending the image data to a data storing apparatus when the free space becomes small. In this manner, more image data can be obtained by photography with the recording medium.
Image data sent from the digital camera described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-184324 are stored in a data storing apparatus. However, the image data are not classified according to users who requested image data storage or according to digital cameras. Therefore, when the image data are downloaded from the data storing apparatus, an access to the image data is troublesome.